


It's About What You Believe

by FranklyNotReally



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: A tiny gentle Amazons fic, F/F, PTSD, Post-Battle Recovery, Pre-Wonder Woman, Themyscira, based on my personal experience training is a good way to handle depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 10:47:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11251542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FranklyNotReally/pseuds/FranklyNotReally
Summary: Orana has been free for four hundred thirty-two days, and every morning, the sun rises again.





	It's About What You Believe

****Orana has been free for four hundred thirty-two days, and every morning, the sun rises again.

Orana rises before the sun, but she still appreciates it. This morning it sends cool, pale yellow fingertips of light over the slick surface of her jiu huan dao, thin shadows splitting from the rings.

“Up so early,” Artemis says from the gate into the training ring, leaning on the post. Artemis is always leaning on something. Orana wonders if _Artemis_ needs the lower body training required by a long weapon.

Orana takes a wide stance, holds a firm center as she thrusts with the long blade. You have to use the full reach of a weapon like this, or what’s the point? You have to be strong enough to control it at the furthest extension, make your body impossibly long. She ignores Artemis, who watches, as if something will be different, this day, from the previous four hundred.

*

“On the far shelf,” Artemis says.

Orana looks further down and sure enough, there it is, the sparring sword with the balance she favors. The weapons racks have been all a jumble for the past week, Antiope’s latest drills sending the battalion running for new weapons to test the limits of their memories. Orana no longer trains with the battalion, but Antiope wisely does not comment. Orana starts before they rise, waits for them to leave. It has been a very long time since Amazons used some of these weapons: the old spears, the weaker, smaller bows. But even an Amazon might find herself in a forest without a forge, falling back on the weapons that could be made swiftly, and by hand.

Orana glances back at Artemis for a moment, and Artemis smiles. Artemis has an easy smile, bright and full of teeth. She joins Antiope in the ring, often, and shows the battalion what one woman and even a small weapon can do with the right kind of fury. All that, and smiling. Orana looks away, reaches for the sword, feels its reassuring weight in her hand.  

*

Orana has been free for four hundred, fifty-seven days and she wonders when she will believe it.

Themyscira is like the best parts of home. The water looks the same, that unbelievable blue, those white stones. Orana supposes, based primarily on the way that everyone else talks about it, that Themyscira _is_ home. Orana walks along the shore and tries very hard not to remember anything else.

*

“I notice you train everything but the staff,” Artemis said, “So I brought you one.”

Orana catches it, of course, because Artemis throws it at her head, of course, and Orana scowls into the ground. Artemis must see the scowl anyway because she hangs her head back and laughs, the sound bouncing against the high rocks that surround the training ring. Orana sighs, spins the staff in her hand, throws it behind her own back and catches it again, just to remind Artemis that she can. But she hasn’t trained the staff in a long time. The really useful staff drills require a sparring partner.  

Artemis raises her own staff, quirks an eyebrow over the weapon. “Shall we?”

By the time Orana notices it, the sun is high in the sky, rays beating down on the back of her shoulders, heat radiating off her entire body.

*

When Orana had been free for thirty-two days, she found the Amazons again. Hippolyta liked to tell a clean mythos, on the days they told the story, the feast days and the annual remembrance. Hippolyta had a flair for the dramatic, like most leaders, Orana supposed. The great and noble Amazons rose up and triumphed against the depravity of man, casting off the shadows and the chains as one sisterhood. Well, it wasn’t wrong. But they did not escape as one--they scattered. The darkness hounded them like wolves, the hunting men in an endless night. Men were weak, but there were so many of them, and Orana had lost them all, every one of her sisters.

Acantha and Egeria finish the enormous wall painting for the Great Hall on the day that Orana has been free for five hundred days, and the Amazons are wild and loud with drink and self-satisfaction, and Orana’s head pounds and her breath feels heavy and through the crowd, there is Artemis, and there is Artemis’ hand, pulling Orana away by the arm. They walk along the shore, and Artemis skips smooth rocks inhumanely far across the water, and she doesn’t say a word.

*

 Orana trains with a shield, and a sword. The shield is new, propped against the corner of the weapons rack where Orana puts her favored halberd, the small bow, her leather-wrapped daggers. There are no shields in the forest, in the dark where your best weapons are your own hands, the fragile strength of your fraying ligaments.

But there is a shield here, on this island, now. Orana feels the weight of it on her back, rolls her hand across the edge and throws the shield into the target while she blocks with her sword. It reflects rays of sunlight, catches the dew on the grass of Themyscira. Orana holds her sword steady in one arm, still ready, but hesitates. This morning, Themyscira only looks like itself.

*

Orana has been free for five hundred fifty days, and the sun rose, and it will rise every day. Orana cleans her sword with care, folds it in a sheath, wraps her daggers. She fixes the jumble that the battalion left--that the battalion _always_ leaves--on her favorite weapons rack, jiu huan dao standing proud from its special hanging, bows lined in their clips. The staff, too, has found a place here.

Orana nods, satisfied. She walks into the sun, looking for Artemis. She’ll be waiting.


End file.
